Mutualist

A forest is not a collection of trees. It is a market. Under every forest floor runs a fungal network that moves sugar, phosphorus and water between roots — between species, between generations, between the dying and the young. Mutualist is a game about being that network. You start with a single tree and almost nothing to spend. You connect a second, and the two begin trading. Carbon flows to what is growing, phosphorus to what is spreading, water to what is thirsty. Then a beetle finds your bark, a frost arrives early, and something under the soil starts asking for a share. Grow, then let go. When a forest has given what it can, you sporulate: the trees release their spores, the grove resets, and Mycelia carries forward into the next forest as permanent memory. 183 Grove upgrades deep, the network stops being something you tend and becomes something that tends itself — and that is when the game asks whether you are willing to lose a forest on purpose to get something older in return. Then it goes further down.…